EF1 tornado, Waverly to Memphis, Nebraska, April 26, 2024

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. EF3136 to 165 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. EF5over 200 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

EF1

Date

April 26, 2024

Touchdown

3:12 PM CDT (20:12 UTC)

Lifted

3:18 PM CDT (20:18 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

3.8 miles (6.2 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Counties

Saunders and Lancaster counties

Touchdown point

41.030, -96.480

Lift-off point

41.070, -96.430

Record number

2404261412-01

118 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS OAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EFU. The highest wind the damage implies is 158 mph.

• Overturned pivot irritation system
• Double wide trailer blew at least 100 yards over the trees in the background. Owner was trying to save horses and got banged up but will be OK. Three horses died.
• Garage destroyed, trees snapped.
• Storm chaser video with time and location stamps indicate that this is the approximate ending point of the tornado as the ground circulation ceased.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

On the morning of April 26th, a potent negatively-tilted shortwave trough ejected out into the central Plains. Upper air analysis shows a jet streak on the downstream side of this trough with substantial divergence aloft over Nebraska. At the surface, morning cloud cover and drizzle across much of eastern Nebraska and western Iowa quickly gave way to partly cloud skies as a warm front moved north through the area, just after noon. At the same time, thunderstorms initiated along a pacific front/dryline in south-central Nebraska. One supercell produced several tornadoes from south-central Nebraska into Boone County, resulting in an EF-2 tornado just west of Cedar Rapids. A second round of supercells initiated in Jefferson and Saline counties. These long-track supercells produced the worst tornado outbreak the Omaha WFO has seen in 10 years. 5 EF-3 tornadoes were surveyed, with several of these tornadoes just shy of an EF-4 rating. One of these EF-3 tornadoes impacted the northeast side of Lincoln, Nebraska where 70 people were reported trapped in a manufacturing plant that collapsed as the tornado passed. Another long-track EF-3 tornado hit portions of Elkhorn, Bennington and Blair, Nebraska. Eppley Airfield was hit by the third EF-3 tornado of the day, doing damage to aircraft hangars on the southeast side of the airport before hitting homes in far western Pottawattamie County. The last two EF-3 tornadoes of the day both impacted portions of Pottawattamie County. While one remained primarily in rural areas in the central part of the county, the final EF-3 of the day hit the town of Minden, Iowa head-on, resulting in 1 fatality and 3 injuries. This was the only fatality of the entire event. This tornado continued into Shelby County, narrowly missing the towns of Tenant and Harlan. A total of 24 tornadoes were confirmed across both Nebraska and Iowa portions of the Omaha CWA. The strongest tornado was the EF-3 that impacted Elkhorn and Blair, with peak estimated wind speeds at 165 miles per hour.||Along the warm front the day prior, scattered thunderstorms developed along the Kansas-Nebraska border during the evening hours. Most of these storms were sub-severe, however, one thunderstorm produced severe hail in and north of Odell, Nebraska for around ten minutes just before 9 pm CDT.

This tornado developed immediately prior to the dissipation of the Lincoln EF-3 tornado to its southeast. The tornado traveled northeast for nearly 3 miles, doing most of its damage to trees and powerlines, but also destroying two large outbuildings and causing window damage to a home. This tornado dissipated in a field as a new tornado developed quickly to its north according to video and satellite evidence. Peak estimated winds in this tornado were at 107 miles per hour, with a peak width of 150 yards and an average track width estimated at 100 yards.

A storm chaser with time and location stamps on their video tracked a tornado through mainly open fields. A damage survey team did find evidence of some minor tree damage at a few locations, sufficient to rate this as an EF-0 tornado.

A storm chaser with time and location stamps tracked a tornado through mainly open fields. A subsequent storm damage survey revealed that EF-0 damage had been done in the Lancaster County portion of this track. Beginning on Little Salt Road a quarter mile east of County Road 10, several large branches were observed to have been broken by the tornado. The tornado continued into Saunders County where it produced EF-1 damage to a farmstead on Emery Road between County Road 8 and County Road 7. Peak estimated winds from this tornado in Lancaster County were estimated to be around 75 miles per hour. The tornado was roughly 30 yards wide for its duration in the county before moving into southeastern Saunders County.

A storm chaser with time and location stamps on their video tracked a tornado through mainly open fields. The storm damage survey indicated locations with snapped tree trunks, as well as one farmstead on Emery Road between County Road 8 and County Road 7 that was impacted. At that location, several trees were snapped, a barn was badly damaged, and there was minor damage to a home. The tornado was intermittent near the end of the track, but had a persistent surface circulation and dust whirl, as well as a partially to fully condensed funnel cloud for its entire duration. This segment is a continuation of the Lancaster County portion of this tornado. The maximum estimated wind speeds from this tornado in Saunders County was 108 miles per hour, with a peak width of 50 yards and an average width of 40 yards.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

41 minutes of warning. NWS OAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 19:31 UTC, 41 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 20:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 17:53 UTC and running to 23:28 UTC.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Enhanced Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:58 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

The Omaha radar (KOAX), 31 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:08 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2024 tornado in NebraskaEvery tornado in Nebraska since 1950Warnings in force in Nebraska nowThe forecast where you are

77 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 78 of them

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.